FBI Director Kash Patel threatened to file a lawsuit against The Atlantic Friday over a “categorically false and defamatory” report alleging “bouts of excessive drinking” have negatively impacted his leadership of the bureau.
The “hit piece,” as Patel’s lawyer described the story, claims the FBI director’s “conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences” have “alarmed” Justice Department and bureau officials – and in one alleged instance resulted in his security detail requesting “breaching equipment” to get him out of a locked room.
“Print it, all false, I’ll see you in court — bring your checkbook,” Patel said in a statement included in the piece.
Jesse Binnall, the FBI director’s attorney, shared a letter on X that was sent to journalist Sarah Fitzpatrick before her story was published asserting that “most” of the “substantive claims” about Patel in the piece were “false, unsourced, and facially defamatory.”
“They were on notice that the claims were categorically false and defamatory. They published anyway,” Binnall wrote.
He added, “See you in court.”
Binnall notes the “vast majority of the claims in the draft article rely solely on vague, unattributed sourcing such as ‘people familiar with the matter’ or ‘some have characterized.’”
The lawyer specifically called out an allegation that Patel’s security detail had so much difficulty waking him after a night of drinking that they requested “breaching equipment” to get into his locked room.
Binnall said the allegations “has no corroborating public record whatsoever and appears to be either fabricated or drawn from a single hostile and unreliable source.”
“A reasonable and responsible pre-publication investigation, including a simple request to the FBI for relevant documentary evidence, would have quickly disproven this claim and many of the others,” he argued.
Erica Knight, the FBI director’s communication strategist, described the story as one “every real DC reporter chased, couldn’t verify, and passed on.”
“The Atlantic’s ‘reporting’? Fabricated stories about ‘breaching equipment’ that was never requested. Intoxication claims with not a single witness willing to put their name on one. A paragraph — I’m not kidding — about the FBI Store not carrying ‘intimidating enough’ merchandise,” Knight wrote on X. “Every serious DC reporter passed on this. Sarah Fitzpatrick and Jeffrey Goldberg printed it anyway.
“Lawsuit is being filed.”
In an interview on MS NOW, Fitzpatrick maintained that she stood by her reporting.
